Dan McConnell
SVP, Product Management, Digital Infrastructure
August 29, 2024
So, I’m extremely excited to be able to share some terrific news. Hitachi Vantara is proud to announce general availability of the inaugural offering under Hitachi iQ, our unique, industry specific AI solution portfolio. Powered by Hitachi Content Software for File part of our Hitachi Content Platform (HCP) portfolio, it has achieved NVIDIA DGX BasePOD™ storage certification. This means it meets NVIDIA’s certification standards for AI performance for NVIDIA DGX BasePOD, helping ensure our customers are ready to seamlessly power their most critical AI apps to drive transformative business outcomes.
It's a significant milestone, sending a clear signal of Hitachi Vantara’s commitment to scalable, high-performance, trustworthy data infrastructure supporting complex AI workloads and ensuring an optimal foundation for your organization’s AI aspirations and success.
And it couldn’t have come at a better time.
The AI Train, Now Leaving the Station
The meteoric rise and sudden ubiquity of generative AI seems unparalleled, even for the tech space. But there are numerous examples of similar types of instantaneous “trending” success all around us.
For example, a few years ago, Greek yogurt was a niche product at the far end of the dairy case. Then BOOM, it was everywhere, even becoming a star ingredient in other product categories, e.g., cereal, salad dressing and dog treats. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it turn up in laundry detergent!
If you think about it, you could make a similar observation about AI. Until ChatGPT rolled into town, to most people AI was a niche technology. Then suddenly, everyone was on the AI “bandwagon.”
Or at least that’s how it seemed…
Bridging the Gap Between AI’s Promise and AI Readiness
While enterprises across industries worldwide are making rapid headway with their initial forays into GenAI use cases and apps leveraging their data, it also shows they’re moving carefully. Why? Because they want to be sure they are ready first. Especially with data infrastructure.
Case in point. In a recent study among 800 businesses by the Enterprise Strategy Group, while 97% of respondents said GenAI initiatives was a top-five priority, three out of five reported gaps in their AI infrastructure and data ecosystem readiness. That’s a significant number.
Rather than move or invest too quickly, this disparity is a sign data savvy IT and business leaders need time to assess their aspirations and prepare for what comes next.
Certified and Ready for Your AI Journey
The importance of data storage in AI workloads cannot be overstated. It was evident a few months back at the NVIDIA GTC global AI conference, where the importance of infrastructure readiness and scalability was on display. Not surprising, since AI changes how the enterprise needs to approach infrastructure. Including servers, cooling, power, networks, and of course, a different approach to data management, access and storage.
All of which highlights the critical importance of being certified and ready.
NVIDIA DGX BasePOD certification with Hitachi Content Software for File provides a robust solution for high-performance computing (HPC) and advanced AI workloads and validates the seamless integration and interoperability with NVIDIA’s industry-leading solutions, helping ensure optimal performance and reliability. The certification signifies that the Hitachi solution works with proven AI infrastructure for enterprises seeking to simplify the design and management challenges and complexities associated with scaling AI.
Hitachi Content Software for File is also ideal for hybrid cloud environments, offering a range of benefits, including the ability to burst to all major cloud providers for compute agility or to run natively in the cloud. As well as enable a variety of consumption models that can be customized to your organization’s unique needs.
It not only offers industry leading performance but also the capability of data lifecycle management to leverage cost optimized object store for colder data. While automated tiering expands the Hitachi Content Software for File namespace from fast flash to economical hard disk storage via on-premises or hybrid cloud object storage to optimize scalability and cost.
Focused on Customer Outcomes
Hitachi iQ with NVIDIA DGX BasePOD offers Hitachi Vantara customers across a broad range of industries a number of critical benefits. And all with a goal of empowering digital transformation and driving targeted business outcomes.
Potential use cases are endless, with a focus on process automation and optimization, predictive analytics, anomaly detection, personalization recommendation and product design and customization.
As with the overall Hitachi iQ portfolio, the solution is ideally optimized for industries including manufacturing, transportation, energy and financial services. Recent Hitachi iQ success stories include:
AI-Assisted Manufacturing
A multinational manufacturing conglomerate with businesses including electronics, semiconductors, appliances, medical devices and more. We worked with their display manufacturing unit to enable real-time analytics to support manufacturing improvement, including multiple IoT sensor data streams, reducing cost and improving quality.
High-Performance Data Platform with GPUs
A global semiconductor manufacturer needed a scalable on-prem solution to consolidate enterprise and fab data sets. We helped them with a flexible, consumption-based solution model offering best of breed performance to ingest, process and organize high velocity data sets.
The Race to the AI Finish Line is Just Getting Started
The emergence of cloud computing over the past few decades created a new dynamic in enterprise applications and data storage that required both enterprise customers and vendors to rethink their approach to infrastructure. Now AI is poised to create the same sort of change, only greater.
Rising to the challenge will require a combination of industry leading performance for analytics workloads, along with seamless data lifecycle management with cost optimized object store. To not only meet the demanding performance needs of analytics, but also the scale, operational and economic challenges of managing large amounts of data to fuel analytics efforts. All in the form of a hardened, certified end to end solution offering maximum time to value for those looking to take advantage of AI.
At Hitachi Vantara, we’re working collaboratively with our partners to deliver the value our customers need to get there. We’re building an AI ready infrastructure designed to deliver data anywhere it needs to be so enterprises can deliver the power of AI to wherever it’s needed.
NVIDIA DGX BasePOD certification is an important part of that ongoing story for Hitachi Vantara. One that’s indicative of a much broader strategy, drawing on the deep experience and resources of the Hitachi Group, with over a century of operational technology and business process experience, as well as a heritage of engineering expertise and success across industries including energy, transportation, manufacturing, healthcare and more.
In the coming weeks and months, we’ll be sharing news about additional aspects of our GenAI story, including our new AI Discovery Service for Hitachi iQ, designed to help customers make sure they are targeting the right use cases and delivering the right AI outcomes to drive maximum value. Ensuring data is relevant and accessible for AI apps and analytics, while prioritizing security and compliance. Proof positive that we’re all in on delivering the solutions and services our customers will need to achieve long term AI success.
Enterprise AI customers, here we come.
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As head of product management for infrastructure, Dan's passionate about analyzing trends and emerging technologies to meet the needs of global customers. Prior to Hitachi Vantara, he spent 20 years at Dell where he was part of the team responsible for their merger with EMC.
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